Category Archives: political news

local news, national news, political news, State news

Ted Cruz: ‘sniveling coward’ of the year

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Ted Cruz takes the grand prize as the “sniveling coward” of this still young year.

I kind of like the term “sniveling.” It’s so, um, descriptive. You can draw a mental picture of someone cowering in a corner, sobbing while crouched in some sort of fetal position.

It’s an epithet that the Texas U.S. senator threw at a fellow Republican presidential candidate in 2016. Yep, that would be Donald John Trump, the guy who eventually won the presidency that year. You recall the moment, yes? Trump tweeted an unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz, Ted’s wife. Ted went after Trump with ferocity, calling him a “pathological liar,” a guy with “no morals,” and yes, he called him a “sniveling coward.”

Trump is all of that. So, too, is Ted Cruz … I mean the sniveling coward part.

You see, after Trump got elected Cruz began sucking up to The Donald. They became best friends. Cruz became afraid of the damage Trump might cause were he to remain committed to his earlier view of Trump’s morals, his lying and his lack of courage.

He cowered in the face of potential payback. Thus, he became a “sniveling coward.”

I suppose you could say he burnished his “sniveling coward” credentials by jetting off to Cancun while Texans shivered in the dark during that horrible winter storm. Oh, and get this: Cruz then decided this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference to mock Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York progressive member of Congress, who came to Texas and raised $5 million in storm relief … while Cruz was hightailing it to the beach in sunny, balmy Mexico.

All of these examples I have cited offer plenty of evidence to suggest that Ted Cruz is very much the “sniveling coward” he once said of an ex-president to whom he now professes blind fealty.

Cruz makes me want to puke.

national news, political news

GOP is in serious trouble

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

What remains of a once-great political party is in serious danger.

It remains loyal to an individual who lost re-election in 2020 and on whose watch the party lost control of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

And yet, Donald John Trump is going to be the featured speaker this weekend at the annual Conservative Action Political Conference in Florida.

I am flabbergasted beyond belief at what has happened to a party that now embraces the alleged “philosophy” of the one-time reality TV show host, a  real estate developer and someone who cannot tell the truth if his life depended on it.

I have noted before but it bears repeating: Donald Trump is not even an actual Republican. He is the classic Republican In Name Only, but the RINOs who follow him toss that label at real Republicans simply because they have the temerity to oppose Trump.

The CPAC conference will not hear from real Republicans, folks such as Sen. Mitt Romney, or Rep. Liz Cheney, or former President George W. Bush or any actual GOP leader who has stood on matters of principle rather than slobbering on the shoes of the ex-president.

What is even more astounding is that CPAC’s activists seem to mirror the view of rank-and-file Republicans who continue to tell pollsters that Donald Trump should be the party’s presidential nominee in 2024.

A twice-impeached president who well might be indicted for various campaign finance allegations, someone who barters on invective and insults is the standard bearer of a party that once stood under the shadow of Abraham Lincoln.

We truly have entered the political Twilight Zone.

political news

Lesson learned from this OMB director fight?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Neera Tanden’s nomination to become the next head of the Office of Management and Budget appears to be nearing an end.

She has zero Republican support and one key Democratic senator, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has announced his opposition to her becoming OMB director; in a 50-50 U.S. Senate, Manchin’s defection appears to be the deal-killer.

Shelby endorses Shalanda Young for OMB director should Biden pull Tanden’s nomination (msn.com)

To be candid, this fight gives me a mild case of apoplexy.

Republicans are mounting a laughable crusade in targeting Tanden’s Twitter rants as their reason for opposing her. As if GOP politicians haven’t said or done the same thing that she has done via that social medium. My personal concern about Tanden’s nomination is her lack of budget management experience.

Having noted the Twitter nonsense, there does appear to be a lesson in this tempest. It is that politicians ought to stay the hell off Twitter, particularly if they aspire to advance their political careers or standing. Tanden has developed a notorious reputation for saying some mighty cruel things via Twitter. But … haven’t her GOP critics said or done the same thing?

Fairness requires me to point out that other Democratic politicians have self-inflicted plenty wounds over Twitter.

As we have learned to many politicians’ dismay, you cannot ever un-say these things once they’re out there. They become inscribed instantly and indelibly in the public record, even after the author of these statements “deletes” the offending tweet.

Will any of the pols who argue that Tanden’s tweets are offensive take heed of the message? Oh, probably not. Still, it is a lesson worth heeding.

national news, political news

Rep. Cheney ‘won’t bend’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I sure hope I don’t choke on these words, so I’ll take great care when I write them.

It is that I am proud of U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., for standing on principle and not “bending” to the whims of partisan hacks.

Cheney has come under intense fire from Donald Trump’s core of lunatics who are angry at her because she voted on Jan. 13 to impeach their hero. The Wyoming Republican Party has censured her for her vote.

Rep. Cheney isn’t backing down. Not one bit!

She told “Fox News Sunday” this morning: “The oath that I took to the Constitution compelled me to vote for impeachment, and it doesn’t bend to partisanship. It doesn’t bend to political pressure,” she added. “It’s the most important oath that we take, and so I will stand by that, and I will continue to fight for all of the issues that matter so much to us all across Wyoming.”

Cheney on Trump impeachment vote: ‘The oath that I took … doesn’t bend to partisanship’ | TheHill

How about that, ladies and gentlemen? She reveres the oath she took when she joined the House of Representatives. That oath compels her to protect the Constitution and the laws of the land. She did not swear any fealty to Donald Trump. She didn’t give him a pass for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection that well could have brought great physical harm to all 535 members of Congress … and the then-vice president, Mike Pence.

They were gathered on Capitol Hill to do their constitutional duty, which was to certify the results of an election that proclaimed President Joe Biden the winner over Donald Trump.

Cheney and the other GOP House members who voted to impeach Trump all have incurred the wrath of the Trumpkin Corps.

I mentioned “choking” on these words. It is because Liz Cheney is not my kind of politician. She is too right-wing for my taste. I would not vote for her if I lived in Wyoming.

However, I am addressing only her principled stand against the insurrection that Donald Trump incited with his angry rhetoric to the mob that stood before him.

It is amazing in the extreme that Rep. Cheney would have to defend her vote to defend the Constitution, but she did … and for that I am proud of her.

national news, political news

This experiment failed … bigly

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It can be proclaimed forever and ever that the Great American Experiment in Unconventional Politicians has turned out to be a monumental failure.

Yep! I feel quite comfortable making that declaration.

Donald John Trump won election in 2016 in what I consider to be the Mother of All Flukes. He swore an oath to protect the Constitution, our government and us. He failed.

What has been the price of that failure? For him? Well, he is the first president in history to be impeached twice. He got past the first impeachment because only one Republican senator — Mitt Romney of Utah — had the courage to convict him of abusing the power of his office. The rest of the GOP caucus cowered in fear of Trump.

As egregious as the first impeachment allegations were — soliciting political favors from a foreign government — they pale in comparison to what transpired on Jan. 6.

Trump fomented a violent insurrection on the Capitol Building which at that moment contained members of Congress and the vice president who were doing their duty to ratify an election that Trump lost. He didn’t buy into that reality. Hence, he exhorted the terrorists/rioters to march on Capitol Hill.

So now he is impeached again. President-elect Biden becomes president of the United States in six days. The Senate will put Trump on trial once more. There stands a still-slim — but possibly growing — chance that he’ll be convicted, even though he will be out of office. The impeachment article contains a provision that bans Trump from ever seeking public office again. Hmm. That might be sufficient incentive for enough GOP senators to join their Democratic colleagues in banning this clown from the White House forever.

A man with zero public service experience on his record flim-flammed his way into the presidency by promising that “I, alone” can fix the nation’s problems. We knew he was a phony and a fraud. We knew about the refusal to release his tax returns. We knew about the groping of women. We knew that he disrespected our military veterans and our valiant prisoners of war. We knew about his penchant for cozying up to dictators. We knew of his mocking of disabled people.

We knew all of that. Yet he got elected anyway.

His quest to “make America great again” failed as well, chiefly because America has already is great.

The country has demonstrated its greatness by turning away from the failed experiment of electing a novice politician to the nation’s highest office.

The experiment was doomed from the beginning … as many of us knew would be the case.

national news, political news

Trump displays breathtaking ignorance

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump displays a breathtaking degree of ignorance about a government he is about to leave behind.

Let’s ponder what is about to transpire.

Vice President Mike Pence is going to preside Wednesday over a joint congressional session that will ratify what we already know as stone-cold fact: that the Electoral College has certified that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the president- and vice president-elect respectively.

They defeated Trump and Pence in the Nov. 3 election.

Yet we hear that Trump is badgering/hectoring/threatening Pence, ordering him to challenge the results he is about to receive while swinging the gavel over the joint congressional session.

Except for this: Pence cannot do a single, solitary thing about the result. He must accept the result and then declare to the world that Biden and Harris will take office on Jan. 20.

Axios and other media are reporting that Trump didn’t know about the vice president’s ceremonial role until just recently. Still, having learned that VP Pence cannot change a vote, he cannot alter a result per Trump’s urging, that he must adhere to the U.S. Constitution, Trump continues to pressure Pence to violate the law.

So help me, Trump’s rebellion against the government he took an oath to defend and protect has crossed the line into criminality.

He demanded that Georgia’s secretary of state change the outcome of that state’s presidential outcome. He has badgered election officials in other swing states to do the same. He has filed and lost lawsuit after lawsuit seeking to cling to power.

I have not yet tried to analyze to my own satisfaction why Trump cannot or will not do what is normal, which is to accept defeat like a man and move on to the next phase of his life. It must be that he isn’t really a man, that he is a petulant little boy disguised in a man’s overfed body.

But … good news awaits us in just 14 days. Just two weeks! Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will take their oaths of office. They will restore knowledge of government to the individuals who will run it. They will usher in an end to the failed experiment of being governed by a president who brought zero public service experience to — or knowledge of — the most exalted public office in the nation.

I am waiting anxiously.

legal news, political news, State news

Paxton seeks to bask in some perverse glory

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have concluded, based on zero hard data and only on my inherent bias that I admit to freely, that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is hellbent on making a spectacle of himself.

He seeks to bask in some sort of perverse glory derived from Donald Trump’s idiotic pursuit of “widespread voter fraud” where none exists. Thus, Paxton has filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court that seeks to overturn the free and fair election results in four states that cast most of their votes for President-elect Joe Biden in the just completed presidential election.

Paxton’s alleged “logic” is beyond belief.

He says the four states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia — changed their voting rules in an unconstitutional fashion by allowing more voters to cast their ballots using the U.S. Postal Service. He wants the high court, therefore, to toss out those states’ election returns.

To its credit, the SCOTUS — with three justices nominated by Donald Trump already aboard — has declared already that another lawsuit brought by a Pennsylvania GOP member of Congress has no merit; it has tossed it aside with a single-sentence ruling.

So what the hell is Paxton trying to do here? I mean, the dude already is in trouble already. He is awaiting trial in Texas courts for securities fraud allegations. He also is being investigated by the FBI for allegedly doing favors illegally for a campaign donor. Seven key legal aides have quit or been fired by the AG after they blew the whistle on what they allege is illegal conduct.

The word on Paxton is that he was a mediocre lawyer prior to his election to the Texas Legislature, where he didn’t distinguish himself as the author of much key legislation. Then he got elected Texas AG in 2014 and was almost immediately showered with suspicion when a Collin County grand jury indicted him for securities fraud.

Now this? The AG must have a screw loose.

Let me be as clear as possible: Joe Biden won the election; there is no evidence of the kind of “widespread” fraud that Trump and his Trumpster Team allege. Even the U.S. attorney general, William Barr, has reached that conclusion.

Ken Paxton needs to stop meddling in other states’ affairs.

political news, State news

No straight-ticket voting this year … woo hoo!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Here is a story that went virtually unreported in the just-completed 2020 presidential election.

It occurred in Texas and it is this: Texans just voted in their first presidential election without having the option of punching a straight-ticket spot on the ballot.

Yep, for the first time, Texans had go down the ballot and vote race by race for the candidates of their choice. Count me as one happy Texas voter to salute the wisdom of the Texas Legislature for scrapping the straight-ticket option.

Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill into law in 2017.

Straight-ticket voting has bugged me beyond reason ever since we moved to Texas in 1984. And the truth is that my dislike of this practice has nothing to do with the fact that Republicans have been the primary beneficiary of this lazy-voter style of ballot-casting. I just want to lay that out there for all to see.

Democrats used to benefit from this practice before they surrendered power to Republicans in the late 1970s and 1980s.

It has bothered me that Texans could walk into their polling booth, hit a single “all-Republican” or “all-Democrat” spot on their ballot. Then they’re done. They exit the polling place feeling smug and proud that they did their civic duty.

But … did they?

I long have argued that if people want to vote for candidates of a single party they should be required to look along the entire ballot and mark the spot next to their candidates’ names. Voters should be able to take a few extra minutes to ponder the decision they make.

I have been yammering about Donald Trump’s petulance over the result of the presidential election. I am glad to say something good about how Texas conducted its election, which was to get rid of straight-ticket voting.

national news, political news

Cowards occupy Capitol Hill offices

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am sickened to the maximum degree by the cowardice I am witnessing among Republicans who occupy most of the U.S. Senate seats and a healthy minority of those in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Americans have just elected Joseph R. Biden Jr. as their president, and yet congressional Republicans by and large refuse to even refer to the president-elect by the title he earned in a free and fair election.

What the hell is going on here?

The Senate’s chief coward, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has a longstanding professional and political relationship with the president-elect. Yet he remains silent on the issue of whether he won the election. McConnell cowers in the face of the Trumpkin Corps of zealots in Kentucky who threaten him with payback if he does what he should have done long ago, which is recognize President-elect Biden as the winner … and then say so out loud in public!

McConnell is just one, of course.

Still, we are witnessing a shameful and reprehensible dereliction of duty among our congressional leadership to do the right thing, which would be to follow our two-century-old tradition of honoring the results of an election. They are dishonoring that democratic process and dishonoring the government they all took an oath to defend and protect.

They sicken me to my core.

I would say we should vote them out of office. Except that too damn many of them were just returned to office in an election we just completed. I am left, therefore, to just vent on this blog … which I will continue to do until I start seeing some courage emerging from the herd of Capitol Hill cowards.

national news, political news

Democracy: big winner of 2020 election

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s set aside — if we can — the idiotic challenges that Donald Trump continues to mount against our electoral system.

I want to declare that the big winner of the 2020 election was none other than democracy itself. I continue to watch the straggler votes being counted and am utterly amazed at the huge numbers being rung up by the vote counters.

Nationally, more than 157 million ballots were cast. President-elect Joe Biden captured 51.2 percent of them; Donald Trump collected 46.9 percent. Biden’s vote total is nearly 81 million ballots; Trump has collected more than 74 million. Trump can claim some sort of “moral” victory (although “moral” is a word I usually do not associate with Trump) in knowing he has the second-greatest vote total in U.S. history.

Why are these numbers so staggering? Because they came while the nation is suffering through a massive pandemic that has killed more than 270,000 Americans.

Politicians urged us to vote. The call came mostly from Democrats who wanted to ensure that Americans used their constitutional right. They encouraged us to vote early if possible. My wife and I voted on the first day of early voting in Texas. We were glad to do so.

Democracy came out the big winner. Our democratic process has survived. I am confident it will survive this farcical attempt by Trump to overturn the clear and decisive result that we all delivered on Election Day. It might take some time for democracy to recover from the wounds that Trump has inflicted by sowing all this doubt into the integrity of our democratic system … but it will. Of that I am supremely confident.

President Ford told us on the day he took office that “our Constitution works.” It has shown us yet again — in the midst of a deadly pandemic — that it remains resilient, sturdy and strong.